Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Say WOW to Raw

I'd like to say a little bit about the raw diet (meaty bones & raw meat) that I've been feeding my pack for about 4 months now. The benefits for this is quite astounding.

They eat quite a bit of raw chicken, yes bones and all. The misconception of "never feed your pets chicken bones" should be "never feed them COOKED chicken bones". The cooking/heating (microwave) process dries out the bones that are, in fact, very pliable when raw. They also get some of the cheapest beef, & pork meat I can buy.

For those of my dogs that have pills to take, chicken hearts have the neatest little "pockets" that pills fit in. The hearts are kind of slippery so even if the dogs knew that there were pills in them they slide so fast down their throats, it's too late!

Their teeth get an amazing scraping when the 'crunch' the bones from the chicken leg quarters they get. Sookie (above) has the most amazing smile for a 7 year old girl!

The only problem I have is Alissa sometimes doesn't want to eat the pieces of chicken I give her. I've even been crushing the bones and cutting the pieces into 1" size or so. It's puzzling....but I reckon I'll work through that.

Sugar use to 'bury' some of her chicken in the sheet that I lay out for her to eat on. Can't have that messy, raw food on the carpet now can I? Now she doesn't miss a piece of her meal.

Rowe-Quinn quite savors his food. Studying it, thinking about how to eat the pieces that are too big to gulp.

Rascal, well, he's never turn his back on ANY food. Licks his bowl spotless and then checks out everyone's bowl when they're done. Rascal was suffering from recurring ear infections before I started him on raw food. He's only had one relapse since then and that cleared up very quickly with minimal treatment (cleaning) and no vet visit for a bunch of drugs that would only have made things worse.

I gained all the information I needed about switching my dogs to this diet when I was researching Homeopathy. The list owner told me in no uncertain terms that my Rascal needed to be on a 'species appropriate' diet. I signed into a Yahoo group called Rawfeeding. You don't even have to ask questions once you're on the list. You just need to search the archives and it's all there.